The Burlington home at 312 Maple St. where Calvin Coolidge and Grace Goodhue were married in 1905. / BRENT HALLENBECK/FREE PRESS

Related Links

In the 1998 biography “Coolidge: An American Enigma,” author Robert Sobel referred to a moment at the White House when a visitor remarked on the vivacious nature of Grace Goodhue Coolidge, wife of President Calvin Coolidge. The First Lady laughed, according to Sobel, and said, “Well, I have to talk for two.”

The president, of course, was known as “Silent Cal.” That taciturn reputation was burnished by stories such as the one where a woman supposedly said she had a bet that she could get him to say more than two words and Coolidge said, “You lose.”

His wife was as outgoing as he was dour. Grace Goodhue grew up in Burlington, the only child of the friendly Andrew Goodhue, a steamboat inspector for the Champlain Transportation Co., and her more serious mother, Lemira. Grace Goodhue grew up on Maple Street, went to college up the hill at the University of Vermont and, after graduating in 1902, took a job at a school for the deaf in Northampton, Mass.

While in Massachusetts she met fellow Vermont native Calvin Coolidge, who at the time worked as a lawyer in Northampton. They married on Oct. 4, 1905 at her family’s home at 312 Maple St. The 1899 house is now an office building for Champlain College.

Grace Goodhue wasn’t involved in politics but with her winning personality did help ingratiate her solemn husband to others as he maneuvered the political world. Her nickname was “Sunshine,” according to William Jenney, regional historic site administrator for the President Calvin Coolidge State Historic Site in Coolidge’s hometown of Plymouth.

“He is very glowing about her in the (Coolidge) autobiography, so from all reports they were a devoted couple and they did complement each other very nicely,” Jenney said. “He was always on the formal side and it was difficult for him to meet new people, and she was quite outgoing and broke the ice.”

Cyndy Bittinger teaches history for the Community College of Vermont and lives just over the state line in Hanover, N.H. She wrote a 2004 biography titled “Grace Coolidge Sudden Star.”

(Page 2 of 2)

“She took such joy in life,” said Bittinger, former executive director of the Coolidge Foundation. Grace Goodhue was a good student in Burlington schools, according to Bittinger, and demonstrated many signs of “gumption,” from urging her family to switch from the Methodist to the Congregational church in Burlington, starting a sorority at UVM and leaving town for Northampton even though her mother wanted her to stay in Burlington and marry a doctor.

“That was very brave,” Bittinger said, “because these were hard things to do.”

That confidence translated to her time with Coolidge as he ran for higher office, first as vice president to Warren G. Harding and then as president after Harding’s death in 1923. Jenney said the Republican Party deemed her worth $1 million in publicity during Coolidge’s 1924 presidential campaign because of her ebullience.

Jenney said a newsreel that’s part of the historic site’s new permanent exhibit “The Life and Legacy of Calvin Coolidge: More Than Two Words” shows the couple after they left the White House welcoming Santa Claus to Northampton to promote the annual Christmas Seals campaign. The ex-president, according to Jenney, gives Santa a formal greeting. He said Grace Coolidge, on the other hand, “is just amazing, like a born actress.”

Despite being a man of few words, Coolidge was able to express what his wife meant to him. “We thought we were made for each other. For almost a quarter of a century she has borne with my infirmities,” he wrote of his wife in his autobiography, “and I have rejoiced in her graces.”

Correction: Grace Coolidge graduated from the University of Vermont in 1902. The original version of this story included the incorrect year.